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Dereliction   Listen
noun
Dereliction  n.  
1.
The act of leaving with an intention not to reclaim or resume; an utter forsaking abandonment. "Cession or dereliction, actual or tacit, of other powers."
2.
A neglect or omission as if by willful abandonment. "A total dereliction of military duties."
3.
The state of being left or abandoned.
4.
(Law) A retiring of the sea, occasioning a change of high-water mark, whereby land is gained.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dereliction" Quotes from Famous Books



... an "alarming extent." An Act was therefore passed to ensure the more effectual prevention of this crime, and once again the Revenue officers were exhorted to perform their duty to its fullest extent, and were threatened with punishment in case of any dereliction in this respect, while rewards were held out as an inducement to zealous action. Under this new Act powers were given to the Army, Navy, Marines, and Militia to work in concert with each other for the purpose of preventing smuggling, for seizing smuggled goods, and all ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton

... with respect to property abandoned at sea (see WRECK), but it is also applied in other senses; for example, land gained from the sea by receding of the water is termed dereliction. Land gained gradually and slowly by dereliction belongs to the owner of the adjoining land, but in the case of sudden or considerable dereliction the land belongs to the Crown. This technical use of the term "dereliction" is to be distinguished from the more general modern sense, dereliction or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... for establishing a general post office, which raised a revenue on the carriage of letters, was not thought a dereliction of this principle; because that regulation was not considered as a tax, but as a compensation for a service rendered, which every person might accept or decline. And all the duties on trade were understood to be imposed, rather with a view to prevent ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall

... flog, men of the gunbearer class. They respect themselves and their calling, and would never stand that sort of punishment. When one blunders, a sarcastic scolding is generally sufficient; a more serious fault may be punished on the spot by the white man's fist; or a really bad dereliction may cause the man's instant degradation from the post. With this in mind we had called the council of gunbearers. Memba ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... forth. Silence being at length in some measure obtained, his lordship said he would not have addressed the meeting but that, having received a circular letter from the committee, and feeling the importance of the subject, he would have thought it a dereliction of his duty if he refrained from attending. He rose thus early because the observations he had to submit would not be suitable if made when the other resolutions were put. The first resolution was, in ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... and whenever they were sold or emancipated, the purchaser required some assurance that they had been the property of an enemy, and not of a fellow-citizen. [139] A citizen could only forfeit his rights by apparent dereliction, and such dereliction of a valuable interest could not easily be presumed. Yet, according to the Twelve Tables, a prescription of one year for movables, and of two years for immovables, abolished the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... discussed. A memorial was drawn up, numerously signed, and forwarded by the same night's post to Lord John Russell, who was then Home Secretary. It brought heavy charges of neglect against the local rulers, and finished as follows: "Feeling that the Mayor and Magistrates have been guilty of gross dereliction of duty, we request your Lordship to institute proceedings to bring them to trial for their misconduct, and, in the meantime, to suspend them from ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... for this purpose is the inspectorate, a highly important department of our system; to the inspectorate come all complaints or information as to defects in goods, insolence or inefficiency of officials, or dereliction of any sort in the public service. The inspectorate, however, does not wait for complaints. Not only is it on the alert to catch and sift every rumor of a fault in the service, but it is its business, by systematic and constant oversight and inspection of every branch ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... than the Spaniards. The easy terms secured by Junot had infuriated England, and not only Dalrymple and Burrard, but Wellesley himself, had been recalled to give an account of their conduct. The last was triumphantly vindicated; but while the others were not convicted of dereliction in duty, they were virtually withdrawn from active life. Sir John Moore was now in command of the English troops in the Peninsula. He had been reinforced with ten thousand men, and feeling sure of Portugal, had advanced into Spain. To Napoleon it seemed ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... exploded for ever. That provision should be viewed as it really was, a reasonable compensation offered by congress, at a time when they had nothing else to give to the officers of the army, for services then to be performed. It was the only means to prevent a total dereliction of the service.—It was a part of their hire.—I may be allowed to say it was the price of their blood, and of your independence. It is therefore more than a common debt; it is a debt of honour. It can never be considered as a pension, or gratuity; nor ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... advocates have attempted to cast on the acts of the Legislative Council. I have no hesitation in saying that many of the bills which it is most severely blamed for rejecting, were bills which it could not have passed without a dereliction of its duty to the constitution, the connexion with Great Britain, and the whole English population of the colony. If there is any censure to be passed on its general conduct, it is for having confined itself ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... line. Mariana had behaved outrageously; she must be familiar with the whole, miserable, past episode; she had given him some very bad moments. He had a personal bitterness toward that old, unhappy affair, the dereliction of his dead grandfather—it had been, he had always felt, largely responsible for his own course in life; it had, before his birth even, formed his limitations, as it had ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Notwithstanding, therefore, this temporary dereliction of their antipathy to the sea, and intercourse with foreigners, the Egyptians can scarcely be regarded as a nation distinguished for their maritime and commercial enterprises; and they certainly by no means, either by sea or land, took ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... causes him to find his centre outside his own circle, and to please himself best by depriving himself of pleasure? What is that power that so often fills us with delights before we have begun to labour, and rewards our labour with the darkness of dereliction? ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... successors, he concentrated; suspended the cupola, and to the most complex, gave the air of the most simple of edifices. Such, take him for all in all, was Michael Angelo, the salt of art; sometimes, no doubt, he had his moments of dereliction, deviated into manner, or perplexed the grandeur of his forms with futile and ostentatious anatomy; both met with armies of copyists, and it has been his fate to have been censured for their folly." This studied panegyric ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... have no idea that it is possible to induce the Imperial Government to exert themselves more for the recovery of Brabant than they did for the preservation of it. Various circumstances (some of which you have stated) co-operated to the scandalous dereliction of a country, which all former history proves to us might have been defended (even for a losing campaign) with one half of the allied force; and it is no part of my creed that the zeal or activity ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... purposes were effected by him, to enable mankind to 'see as from a tower the end of all.' I cannot discern one false step in Strafford's public conduct, one glimpse of a recognition of an alien principle, one instance of a dereliction of the law of his being, which can come in to dispute the decisive result of the experiment, or explain away its failure. The least vivid fancy will have no difficulty in taking up the interrupted design, and by wholly enfeebling, or materially emboldening, the insignificant nature of Charles; ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... complimentary way by Monsieur de la Tourelle. One day I said to my father that I did not want to be married, that I would rather go back to the dear old mill; but he seemed to feel this speech of mine as a dereliction of duty as great as if I had committed perjury; as if, after the ceremony of betrothal, no one had any right over me but my future husband. And yet he asked me some solemn questions; but my answers were not such as to do ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell

... Parisian gossip, to retail to the less adventurous members of their circle—were all delighted with M. Jerome: it was M. Jerome here, and M. Jerome there; and if M. Jerome happened to dine out, every one seemed to feel uneasy, and look upon him as guilty of a great dereliction of duty. They could almost as well have done ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... in another foaming breaker, and again He sought solitude, and again He found tranquillity—and again returned to find the disciples asleep. 'They knew not what to answer Him' in extenuation of their renewed dereliction. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... scanty evidence goes, we find the poet isolated from his fellows, so far as isolation was possible, during his long stay at Bergen. He was not accused, and if there had been a chance he would have been accused, of dereliction. No doubt he pushed through the work of the theatre doggedly, but certainly not in a convivial spirit. The Norwegians are a hospitable and festal people, and there is no question that the manager of the theatre ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse

... income. Thus did the beggarly government make money out of the small resources of those who, when the exchequer failed to fulfil its duties, endeavored themselves, as best they could, to make up for this dereliction. ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... a great sovereign; and urged her to recollect that all the king's subjects, so long as their rank and characters were such as to entitle them to admission at court, had an equal right to her attention; and that the system of exclusiveness which she had adopted was a dereliction of her duty, not only to those who were thus deprived of the honors of the reception to which they were entitled, but also to the king, her husband, who was injured by any line of conduct which tended to discourage the nobles of the land from ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... cause of this dereliction. Fidel Avila was living with a woman, by whom he had three children. The priest summoned him to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... belief "that one particle of compromise with that usurped power, or of concession to its pretensions, would be a heavy calamity to the people of the whole Union, and to none more than to the people of South Carolina themselves; that such concession would be a dereliction by Congress of their highest duties to their country, and directly lead to the final and irretrievable dissolution ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy

... understood the spirit of its institution, and who was destined to succeed him in his headship, a cold and terrible epistle. 'Reflect upon your conduct. Let me know whether you acknowledge your sin, and tell me at the same time what punishment you are ready to undergo for this dereliction of duty.' Lainez expressed immediate submission in the most abject terms; he was ready to resign his post, abstain from preaching, confine his studies to the Breviary, walk as a beggar to Rome, and there teach grammar to children, or perform menial offices. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... this picture I was moved to pity Perkins, torn asunder between two dreadful alternatives, the one of leaving the trousers there and committing a dereliction of duty, the other of removing them stealthily and committing an indelicacy. I was also moved to pity myself, lying supine under his speechless contempt. I resolved to spare us both, to get out of bed and put things right. I stretched out a hand for the switch. I grasped it with an effort. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various

... in its widest sense denotes any kind of omission; but sometimes it is taken strictly for the omission of something concerning God, or for a man's intentional and as it were contemptuous dereliction of duty: and then it has a certain gravity, for which reason it ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... opportunities. Every wagon we own, from the lightest to the heaviest, is built to order on our particular specifications by the Studebaker people." Here Jeffries pointed his finger sharply at de Spain as if to convict him of some dereliction. "You've seen them! You know ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... "but, like a wise man, holds his tongue." Perhaps you only mean that he cannot decide, otherwise I should think such silence the reverse of magnanimity; for if others behaved the same way, how would opinion ever progress? It is a dereliction of actual duty. (In a subsequent letter to Sir J.D. Hooker (March 12th, 1860), my father wrote, "I ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... interests at stake are common to us all. The backlying cause of the trouble,—slavery and its accompaniments—was in a sense our common responsibility; we all ought to have united to get rid of it peaceably, and the North ought to have paid its share. For the dereliction the South has paid a terrible price. The North, too, suffered wofully, yet in far less measure. Would it not be the part of patriotism and statesmanship—of wisdom and good-will—that all should now take some share in lifting the load which weighs ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... giving them clearly to understand that they must not expect any assistance from us. The officers, however, should be extremely cautious in pointing out to them that it is for their own good only that this advice is given to them, and not from any dereliction of that regard with which we always view their interests; it will perhaps require some management to avoid exciting their jealousy or resentment; the doing so must ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... Congress to propose any measure within the limits of the Constitution, which he believes is required by the interests of his constituents and the welfare of his country. Now mark the base surrender of this right—the wicked dereliction of this duty. All "resolutions and propositions" relating "in any way or to any extent whatever to the subject of slavery," shall be laid on the table, and "no further action whatever shall be had thereon." What a spectacle has been presented to the American people!—one ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... condition of the camp on the night before the attack, the posting of the militia in advance of the main army, and the utter lack of scouts and runners, were all bad enough, but on the other hand, the delay and confusion in the quartermaster's department, the dereliction of the contractors, and the want of discipline among the militia and the levies, were all matters of extenuation. To win was hopeless. To unjustly denounce an old and worthy veteran of the Revolution, who acted with so much manly courage on the field of battle, ill becomes ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... before her like an ignis fatuus. The invitation from Lady Pensil, for mysterious reasons, had never arrived; and poor Mr. Bantling himself, with all his friendly ingenuity, had been unable to explain so grave a dereliction on the part of a missive that had obviously been sent. He had evidently taken Henrietta's affairs much to heart, and believed that he owed her a set-off to this illusory visit to Bedfordshire. "He says he should think I would go to the Continent," Henrietta wrote; "and as he thinks of going ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James

... party that draws a large measure of its strength from the South till disaster from material issues compel. With the Republican party (as of a Christmas morning) "everything is lovely and the goose hangs high;" but discomfiture, sometimes laggard, is ever attendant on dereliction of duty. This usurpation, which should have been throttled when a babe, has now become a giant seated in its castle, compelling deference and acquiescence to an anomaly, reaching beyond the Negro in its menace ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... men from the humble walks of life; comparatively illiterate and unrefined; without civil or religious institutions, and with a love of liberty, bordering on its extreme; their more enlightened descendants can not but feel surprise, that their dereliction from propriety had not been greater; their ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... the President of the Brome County Alliance, has been dismissed from his position as agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and whereas we have reason to believe that his dismissal has been brought about because of his temperance activity, and not because of dereliction of duty: Resolved, That this Alliance will stand by Brome County Alliance in any action it may take under the advice of our solicitors to vindicate the reputation ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith

... abandoned his mere inchoate wanting, and considered the elements of the position that were known to him. There was, in the first place, that old, lamentable dereliction of Lichfield Stope's, and its aftermath in his daughter. Millie had just recalled to Woolfolk the duration, the activity, of its poison. Here there was no possibility of escape by mere removal; the ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... life was in her hands, and nothing could exceed the energy with which she undertook its preservation. Punctually to the minute appeared the prescribed application, and, if she perceived or suspected any dereliction on my part, it was sure to be reported to the doctor at his next visit. I had the taste of camomile and mallows in my mouth from morning till night; the skin of my jaw blistered under the scorching of ammonia; but the final result was, ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... alone. A few words served to explain the condition of Fid. It was very apparent that the young man was not only disappointed, but that he was deeply mortified. The frank and ingenuous air, however, with which he turned to the Rover, to apologize for the dereliction of his follower, satisfied the latter that he was far from suspecting any improper agency in bringing about his ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... can I do?" says the judge, darting a glance sidewise at Caroline. "What you ask of me is a dereliction of duty, and I am a magistrate before ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac

... this it is obvious that only a very serious dereliction of duty on Alfred's part could call for or justify; but, whatever he may have done to deserve it, his offenses were so fully expiated by his subsequent sufferings, and he atoned for them so nobly, too, by the ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... career; nor, of course, did Adrian expect they would. He rather acted now under the persuasion that conciliation had reached its limits, inasmuch as further concessions would dishonour his dignity, and be a dereliction of his duty as chief pastor of the Christian Church;—the unconditional subjection of which under the brutal sway of the civil sword, Frederic plainly proved that it was his great aim to effect. Adrian ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby

... judging when the spirit of the constitution has been changed, to condemn Clarendon for not throwing up his office, in the face of such rejection of his advice. It is enough to say that such action would have been deemed by Clarendon himself to be a dereliction of his duty. By all the memories of the past, by his affectionate reverence for his former master, by long association in the days of exile and misfortune—nay, also by his profound veneration for ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... along in the train, among the other emblems and trophies of violence and plunder, proved to be by no means favorable to Caesar. The population were inclined to pity her, and to sympathize with her in her sufferings. The sight of her distress recalled too, to their minds, the dereliction from duty which Caesar had been guilty of in his yielding to the enticements of Cleopatra, and remaining so long in Egypt to the neglect of his proper duties as a Roman minister of state. In a word, the tide of admiration for Caesar's ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott

... ridden that way in the flush of his youth and hopefulness. The girl-sweetheart he was then going to rejoin was now the wife of another; the woman who had been her guardian was now his own wife. He had accepted without a pang the young girl's dereliction, but it was through her revelation that he was now about to confront the dereliction of his own wife. And this was the reward of his youthful trust and loyalty! A bitter laugh broke from his lips. It was ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte

... to write to this gentleman," he said. "I shall not write to him. If you are fairly intelligent, Miss Affleck, and anxious to do your best, you will do very well, I dare say. References are of little use to me; I prefer to use my own judgment. But you must understand clearly that for every dereliction there is a fine, which is deducted from the salary. A printed copy of the rules will be given you. And you may be discharged at a moment's notice ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... house would have looked even to one for whom it contained no memories; all the more because in its utter dereliction it looked so durable. Some of the stucco had fallen off the walls of the two wings; thick flakes of it lay on the discoloured roof of the veranda, and thick flakes of it could be seen lying in the grass below. Otherwise, there were few ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... wild weather at the southern end of the earth, Joshua Higgins ceased washing. His grimy face usually robbed George Dorety of what little appetite he managed to accumulate. Ordinarily this lavatorial dereliction would have caught Captain Cullen's eye and vocabulary, but in the present his mind was filled with making westing, to the exclusion of all other things not contributory thereto. Whether the mate's face was clean or dirty had no bearing upon westing. Later on, when ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London

... him to say more, but submitted, "Oh, well, if you're going to Kent Harbor, of course!" as if that would excuse and explain any sort of dereliction; and then the talk went on about Kent Harbor till Mrs. Birkwall asked, generally, as if it were part of the Kent Harbor inquiry, "Didn't I hear that the Ashwoods were going to their place at Upper Merritt, ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... of giving virtue to those who most scrupulously observe them? Do we not daily see persons who believe themselves damned if they forget a mass, if they eat a fowl on Friday, if they neglect a confession, though they are guilty at the same time of great dereliction to society? Do they not hold the conduct of those very unjust, and very cruel, who happen to have the misfortune of not thinking and doing as they think and act? These practices, out of which a great number of men have created essential duties, but too commonly ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... the dreadful cross upon, Had, as it were, a dereliction In this regard, in those great terrors He Had no one beam from God's ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... committee of the Assembly appointed to consider the status of the Sugar Act, favored the commission of Hutchinson as a special agent of the Colony to go to England and present the claims of the colonists, he was accused of inconsistency in opinion and action, and of dereliction of duty as the acknowledged leader of the patriotic party. Combined with the extraordinary appointment of Hutchinson, which however never took effect owing to the opposition of Governor Bernard, Otis was also charged with a too absolute recognition of the supremacy of Parliament ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... gratuitously ducking. Such a state of things could not last. W—— must change the air of Oxford or be suffocated. He chose the former; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction; he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with W——, the last afternoon I ever saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane leading from the High-street to the back of ***** ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... CROESUS CASH was greatly annoyed that so many people should have been admitted to his library. He bitterly reproached his valet for this dereliction of duty. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various

... well as country may be, under certain conditions, Home, I am well aware. For many natures London has an attractiveness which is all its own. And yet to indulge one's taste for it may be a grave dereliction of duty. The State is built upon the Home, and as a training-place for social virtue, there can surely be no comparison between a home in the country and a home in London. All those educating influences which ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... that the lot of those whose cause they champion may be made merely endurable. Whenever the law is wilfully and successfully disregarded that a minority may be favored there will be found a means by which this dereliction is brought to the attention not only of the lawbreakers, but of the world, and as the latter, in all its divisions, contains lawbreakers who consider themselves above or beyond the law the punishment of one is usually followed by the punishment of others, for lawbreakers ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various

... hit the canoe, wherein, if it had, it must infallibly have killed some one, but falls short, and goes tearing off with the current, well out of reach of the canoe. The Captain seeing this gross dereliction of duty by a Chargeur Reunis broom, hauls it in hand over hand and talks to it. Then he ties the other end of its line to the mooring rope, and by a better aimed shot sends the broom into the water, about ten yards above the canoe, and it drifts towards ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... superintend the business, at a salary of $1000 a year and his travelling expenses; contracts are made or to be made, mails carried, postmasters appointed and paid. This is doubtless a very proper and necessary thing, one which the government could not have omitted without a plain dereliction of duty. The honor and interest of the nation required that as soon as the title to the country was settled, our citizens who were resident there, and those who shall go to settle there, should enjoy the benefits of the mail. And as it was the nation's business to establish the mail, ...
— Cheap Postage • Joshua Leavitt

... outpost job on this week, at which my company achieved an unpremeditated success—unpremeditated by the authorities, that is. Before setting out we had been threatened with the heaviest penalties if we were discovered at any moment in a dereliction of duty, which meant that the Adjutant proposed to pay us a surprise visit and had every hope of discovering responsible officers asleep at their posts. Those who know will tell you that the hour before dawn is that during which an attack is most likely in real war; they also ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various

... my father has—at least, I hope so—abjured his past errors, and that he is, at the present moment, a firm and zealous friend to religion and order—a better royalist, possibly, than his son; for he has to atone for past dereliction, while I have no other impulse than warm, decided preference and conviction." Having made this well-turned speech, Villefort looked carefully around to mark the effect of his oratory, much as he would have done had he been addressing the ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... grooms, jockeys, or coachmen, and the nearer approach they can make to the appearance and manners of their tutors, the fitter the pupils for turf-men, or gentlemen dealers; for the school in which they learn is of such a description that dereliction of principle is by no means surprising—fleecing each other is an every-day practice—every one looks upon his fellow as a bite, and young men of fashion learn how to buy and sell, from old whips, jockeys, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... Hogarth, will perhaps serve to clear up some unaccountable mistakes or omissions which appear in that series of volumes, written at long intervals, and by different hands. Mr. Fuseli has alluded to them in utter astonishment; and cannot account for Vasari's "incredible dereliction of reminiscence, which prompted him to transfer what he had rightly ascribed to Giorgione in one edition to the elder Parma in the subsequent ones." Again: "Vasari's memory was either so treacherous, or his rapidity in writing ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... him, prevented any such expedient from succeeding. The dread and disgrace of failure had no influence on Deerslayer, who deemed it even a point of honor to reason and feel like a white man, rather than as an Indian, and who felt it a sort of duty to do all he could that did not involve a dereliction from principle, in order to save his life. Still he hesitated about making the effort, for he also felt that he ought to see the chance of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... this dereliction, it was found difficult to make frequent excursions to earth with them. Those attracted to their terrestrial homes were attended by ladies who had them in charge, and who would kindly accompany them, for one or two weeks, to visit their friends ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... Byzantine empire was indulged in a servile and precarious respite of thirty years. Manuel sank into the grave; and John Palaeologus was permitted to reign, for an annual tribute of three hundred thousand aspers, and the dereliction of almost all that he held ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... anticipate all that experience has taught to the more advanced nation. Such is the ideal rule of a free people over a barbarous or semi-barbarous one. We need not expect to see that ideal realized; but, unless some approach to it is, the rulers are guilty of a dereliction of the highest moral trust which can devolve upon a nation; and if they do not even aim at it, they are selfish usurpers, on a par in criminality with any of those whose ambition and rapacity have sported from age to age with the ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill

... immediately to strike at all other parties preparing to join them. Had parties from the country been suffered to incorporate with the British, and to unite in their principles and views, the sense of a dereliction of duty, and the punishment expected to await it, as well as the pride of opinion, usually attending a new conversion, might have kept them firm in their apostacy. Of a truth, Gen. Marion made many converts to the ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James

... had gone, until darkness crept into the room. She rose then, mechanically, and prepared and ate some supper. Later Perry Blair came and she found that pressing as her own problem seemed she could still think first of him. She would not tell him now of Felicity's dereliction. He needed a single mind to face his coming struggle. He would ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... less with a newspaper. Consider the effects of any lapse from the spirit of that signal in a profession where time is observed more strictly than in pugilism, where whatever one does one does in the white light of self-appointed publicity, where a single error or dereliction may ruin the prestige of years! Consider also the rank turpitude of such a lapse! Alas, women frequently do not consider these things. Some of them seem to have a superstition that a newspaper is ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... from his spending the irregularly acquired possessions in a seemly manner. A well-bred expenditure of his booty especially appeals with great effect to persons of a cultivated sense of the proprieties, and goes far to mitigate the sense of moral turpitude with which his dereliction is viewed by them. It may be noted also—and it is more immediately to the point—that we are all inclined to condone an offense against property in the case of a man whose motive is the worthy one of providing the means of a "decent" ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... select one man or six men for trial, condemnation, and punishment, out of, say, four millions who have really participated in the same alleged wicked, malicious, seditious, evil-disposed, and unlawful proceeding, is unfair to the six men, and unfair to the other 3,999,994 men—is a dereliction of duty on the part of the officers of the law, and is calculated to bring the administration of justice into disrepute. Equal justice is what the constitution demands. Under military authority an army may be decimated, and a few men may properly be punished, while the rest ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan

... afternoon Charleton went to a choice gathering of spirits at the post-office; and Douglas, feeling particularly lonely and unsettled, rode up the south trail after three of Charleton's young mules which had strayed. He felt somehow that, with the dereliction of Charleton, the last hold he had on reality ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... In the general dereliction of churchly care for the people of the Southern colonies, on the part of those who professed the main responsibility for it, the duty was undertaken, in the face of legal hindrances, by earnest Christians ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... responsibility, and it would seem a travesty upon rational education to force him to acquire this ability wholly during the eight years succeeding his school experience. If, at the age of eighteen, he does not exhibit some ability in this respect, the school may justly be charged with dereliction. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... The town hall should be easy to find; indeed, he thought he saw it in the distance. As he went, he asked himself two questions: Could he fail to deliver the package according to instructions, and yet earn his money? And was there any way of so delivering it without risk to the recipient or dereliction of duty to the man who had intrusted it to him and whose money he wished to earn? To the first question his conscience at once answered no; to the second the reply came more slowly, and before fixing his mind determinedly upon it he asked himself why he felt that this was no ordinary ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... President with communications asking the same leniency for Hicks. So certain was I that Lincoln had or would reprieve Hicks that I failed to have him shot on the day named. Some officious persons reported my dereliction to Meade, who thereupon (with some censure) ordered me to shoot Hicks on the next day, and to report in person the fact of the shooting. This order I was obliged to obey. The brigade was drawn up on three sides of a square, with ranks opened facing each other, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... within the conditions of Lord Edward's exception.[35] It is difficult, in the face of outspoken declarations like these, to know what writers can be thinking of when, with respect to the controversy on the manner of Rousseau's death, they pronounce him incapable of such a dereliction of his own most cherished principles as anything like ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... sleep. None the less it might happen: Un' Benny, for example, was a wakeful old man, given to rising from his couch unreasonably and walking abroad to commune with his Maker. For certain if Nicky-Nan should be met, going or coming, with a shovel on his shoulder, his dereliction from grace would be trumpeted throughout the parish, and—worse, far worse—it would ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... beyond the raciness of their writings, there is but little to admire or imitate in the lives of such men as Steele, Foote, or Sheridan. It is, however, fit that principle should be thus recognised and upheld, and that any dereliction from its rules should be placed against the account of such as enjoy other degrees of superiority, and allowed to form an item in the ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 276 - Volume 10, No. 276, October 6, 1827 • Various

... often made by cowards: 'and even as a soldier,' said he, 'it's odds if there should be such another alarm for the next hundred years.' But all in vain: his judge was too much incensed: 'Such a scandalous dereliction of duty!' said he; 'No, no: I must make an ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... fire. Now it seems plain that here is an occasion for the interposition of municipal authority. In spite of the jealousy (proper within certain limits) with which governmental interference with private property is regarded in this country, it is a manifest dereliction of duty on the part of our city authorities not to exercise a strict supervision over these houses. The interests which are chiefly affected by their condition are not private, but public interests. There are legal means for abating nuisances; and there is no reason why ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... of all for Marian was to get along with old Jordan; for he was only a shadow of his former self. He never entered Daniel's room; if Marian wanted to see him she went upstairs, and there he sat, quiet, helpless, extinguished, a picture of utter dereliction. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... government. We are not in this respect "un vrai peuple moderne," like the Americans. The Americans conceive of the executive as one of their appointed agents; when it intervenes in common life, it does so, they consider, in virtue of the mandate of the sovereign people, and there is no invasion or dereliction of freedom in that people interfering with itself. The French, the Swiss, and all nations who breathe the full atmosphere of the nineteenth century, think so too. The material necessities of this age require a strong executive; a nation ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... together, then straggled apart; Mrs. Simonson being the first dereliction, as she was not quite equal to climbing as fast as the young people. Thus it came about that Nattie found herself alone with Clem, and suddenly stopping, with some embarrassment, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer

... of legendary fables, which he quoted as historical facts. All at which an English woman would have smiled, appalled the tender but superstitious Neapolitan; and when the priest left her, with solemn rebukes and grave accusations of a dereliction of her duties to her child, if she hesitated to fly with it from an abode polluted by the darker powers and unhallowed arts, Viola, still clinging to the image of Zanoni, sank into a passive lethargy which held her very reason ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... self-mortification, and his horses' heads were turned to Richmond when within a stage of London. He had spent two days with the good old man, and those two days had so warmed and softened his feelings that he was quite appalled at his own dereliction from fixed principles! However, he went before Cleveland had time to discover that he was changed; and the old man had ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... creative truthfulness, if no other merit. I had really no wish to conceal anything except the fact that I had not, in my utter helplessness, even tried to get Miss Gage any other partners. But in the larger interest of the present situation, Mrs. March seemed to have lost the sense of my dereliction in this respect. She merely asked, "And it was after you went back to the parlour, just before you came home, that you wrote those names ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Zepp-strafer, kisses a pretty (oh, ever such a pretty!) widow by mistake. And continues by arrangement. Miss IRIS HOEY was really perfectly irresistible—something ought to be done about it. She would have reduced the whole Flying Corps to dereliction of duty. Mr. FRANK BAYLY had just that air of awkward modesty which is so much more effective than plain swank as an advertisement of gallantry, and Miss MURIEL POPE played a programme-girl with all the skill that an artist thinks is worth putting ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... better than in the work of my Divine Master; and should it be his will to terminate my life in the Arab tent, I shall have more consolation there than in an English home under the stinging sense of a dereliction of my religious duty. ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... Richard, then, there was no other person in the world. There was that that fenced him from all living. Our Saviour Christ upon the rood spoke to His Blessed Mother before His dereliction, but not again afterwards. There was no more that He might say to her, or to ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... on the wedding tour. But this defalcation, if we may so call it, of the chief dramatis personae of the day, though considered to be in good taste, is by no means a popular innovation, but is rather regarded as a prudish dereliction from the ancient forms of hospitality, which are more prized than ever on so genial an ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge

... he had wandered from one island to another, haunted by the fear of recapture and death since the day when, in a mad fit of passion, he had, while ashore with a watering party, driven his cutlass through the body of a brutal petty officer who had threatened, for some trifling dereliction of duty, to get ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... to such a leprosy in my body that I must die alone; alone without them that should assist, that should comfort me? But comes not this expostulation too near a murmuring? Must I be concluded with that, that Moses was commanded to come near the Lord alone;[67] that solitariness, and dereliction, and abandoning of others, disposes us best for God, who accompanies us most alone? May I not remember, and apply too, that though God came not to Jacob till he found him alone, yet when he found him ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... than ever. She kept Theo at work at the smaller tasks she chose to trust to her, and watched her sharply, with no shadow of the softened mood she had given the candle-lighted bedroom a glimpse of. She was as severe upon any dereliction from duty as ever, and the hardness of her general demeanor was not a whit relaxed. Indeed, sometimes Theo found herself glancing up furtively from her tasks, to look at the thin, sharp face, and wondering if she had not dreamed that her arms had clasped a throbbing, shaken ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett

... perfidiously, abandoned that supervisorship in default of which neither right of inspection, nor duty of inspection, nor power of inspection, was found to be lodged in any quarter—there it was, precisely in that dereliction of censorial authority, that all went to ruin. All corporations grow corrupt, unless habitually kept under the eye of public inspection, or else officially liable to searching visitations. Now, who were ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... his position or salary shows either the value attached to his services or the feeling that special consideration was due to one who had voluntarily given his eyes for his country. "The choice lay before me," he writes, "between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if AEsculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spoke to me from heaven." In September, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... I, and a little pause ensued). "One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf, "And sees, each side, the good effects of it, "A value for religion's self, "A carelessness about the sects of it. "Let me enjoy my own conviction, "Not watch my neighbour's faith with fretfulness, "Still spying there some dereliction "Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness!" Better a mild indifferentism, "Teaching that both our faiths (though duller "His shine through a dull spirit's prism) "Originally had one colour! "Better pursue a ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning

... becoming proselytes to their faith. Jehovah was literally their direct, though invisible, King, Law giver, and Judge, palpably rewarding their fidelity by overt temporal blessings, punishing their dereliction by awful temporal calamities ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... on to do his duty, by himself. A narrow-minded man might have shaken solemn head, even if he had allowed such dereliction. But Dr. Upround knew that the girl was good, and he never put strain upon her honesty. So away she sped by a lonely little foot-path, where nobody could take from her contagion of bad morals; and avoiding the incline of boats, she made off nicely for the quiet outer bay, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... left eye was gone. He was warned by his doctor that if he persisted in using the remaining eye for book-work, he would lose that too. "The choice lay before me," Milton writes in the Second Defence, "between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight; in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if Aesculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spake to me from heaven. I ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... narrow incomes; but that the opulent should abandon their country, their natural station, and their duties, simply to drink champagne at a lower rate, and have cheaper dancing-masters, we must always regard as a scandalous dereliction of the services which every man of wealth and rank owes to his tenantry, his neighbours, and his nation. Of course, we except the traveller for curiosity; the man of science, whose object is to enlarge his knowledge; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... cease to wander in a maze of thoughts, cares, and affections; if I could be at leisure from the external things and creatures of this world, and chiefly from myself; if, in short, I might "come into a plenary dereliction of myself," I should at once "begin to see and know of the most present habitation of God in me and so I should eat of the Tree of Life in the midst of the Paradise, which Paradise I myself am, and be a Guest of God."[32] Adam, who was "the Protoplast" and begetter of all men, ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... freedom little inferior to that which, falling from the lips of Captain Molineux, had so pained his sensitive brother; with this difference, however, that, in this instance they were the candidly expressed opinions of men arraigning the conduct of one of their fellows apparently guilty of a gross dereliction from duty, and not, as in the former they had seemed to be, with any ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... matrimonial connection has been founded upon a dereliction of principle, and formed in defiance of the suggestions of common prudence, of parental kindness, and even of the interdictions of Heaven itself, we feel compelled to express our grief, rather than offer our congratulations; ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... heard in the court, before the windows of the parlour, a well-known voice. 'I aver to you, my worthy friend,' said the speaker, 'that it is a total dereliction of military discipline; and were you not as it were a TYRO, your purpose would deserve strong reprobation. For a prisoner of war is on no account to be coerced with fetters, or detained IN ERGASTULO, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... away through solitary lanes till he reached his quarters, utterly broken down in heart. The whole forenoon he lay on his iron bed, oblivious of all the world and steeped in his own tremendous sense of dereliction. It was in vain that the golden spring sun streamed through his windows rocking the room in waves of splendour. The glad sounds of voices, in the Square, of men and women enjoying the beautiful weather in promenades, were unheeded by him. The great voice of cannon ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... thought it best to leave Aubrey where he was. The Countess, who had been Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth, had been well drilled by that redoubtable lady into proper and submissive behaviour; and she now required similar good conduct from her dependants, with excellent reasons for absence or dereliction from duty. That she was never deceived would be too much ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... cannot be said that she is more neglectful of it now than she has been in past years; the truth is that she is nearer to the recognition of it to-day than she has ever been. Derelict as she is to her primary obligation, it must yet be said that a consciousness of that dereliction is beginning to make her uneasy, and that has never before been true of any large portion of her membership. Since the earliest centuries the possibility of transforming the social order by purely spiritual influences has scarcely dawned upon her. So long as society was feudalistic or aristocratic, ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden

... she had spoiled her own fortunes, and that she would, ere night, be called upon to abdicate her stool behind the counter in favour of that humble customer; and yet so it was. Mr Benjamin could not forgive her dereliction from honesty; and the more he had trusted her, the greater was the shock to his confidence. Moreover, his short-sighted views of human nature, and his incapacity for comprehending its infinite shades and varieties, caused him to extend his ill opinion farther ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... betrayed her agonies, and yet, at that moment, the hand of God pressed heavily on her soul as well as on her body. That she might resemble Him to the end, her crucified Lord presented her once more with the bitter cup of interior dereliction which she had so often before shared with Him, again despoiling the inferior part of the soul of those heavenly consolations which would so greatly have lightened the pressure of physical suffering. "It is hard," the "Imitation of Christ" says, "to want ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"

... productions have a somewhat different character. They are a departure from, a dereliction of his first principles. They are classical and courtly. They are polished in style, without being gaudy; dignified in subject, without affectation. They seem to have been composed not in a cottage at Grasmere, but among the half-inspired groves and stately recollections ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... been rendered infamous by their conviction of great crimes, are deemed incompetent to give evidence. This rule has been adopted, because the commission of an infamous crime implies, as Sir William Scott has observed, "such a dereliction of moral principle on the part of the witness, as carries with it the conclusion that he would entirely disregard the obligation of an oath." Of such a witness it has been said, by another eminent judge,[102] that "the credit of his oath is over-balanced ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... going to do about it?" Cappy echoed. "Why, I'm going to send a judge and a jury aboard the Quickstep, try this Finn, Kjellin, and if he's guilty of dereliction of duty I'll bet you a plug hat to one small five-cent bag of smoking tobacco I'll know all about it ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... of the chance. She wanted to be very simple in all her relations with her friend, and of course it was not simple so soon as she began to keep things back. She could at any rate keep back as little as possible, and she felt as if she were making up for a dereliction when she answered Olive's ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James

... breathless as I paused. I had meant this to be the end of my tale, but I saw at once that no excuse would be held valid for such a shameful dereliction of duty. ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... overlook this inconsistency; and as demonstrations cost her little, she not only indicted on the occasion a solemn letter of reproof to her ally, but actually professed herself so deeply wounded by his dereliction of principle, that it was necessary for her to tranquillize her mind by the perusal of many pious works, and the study of Boethius on consolation, which she even undertook the task of translating. Essex, whom she honored with a sight ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... Parnassus the rank reprobation of character, the utter dereliction of all principle, in a profligate junto which has not only outraged virtue, but violated common decency; which, spurning even hypocrisy as paltry iniquity below their daring;—to unmask their flagitiousness to the broadest ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... us, who, feeling certain that they could not survive imprisonment much longer, were disposed to look favorably upon the Non-Combatant's Oath, thinking that the circumstances of the case would justify their apparent dereliction from duty. Whether it would or not I must leave to more skilled casuists than myself to decide. It was a matter I believed every man must settle with his own conscience. The opinion that I then held and expressed was, that if a boy, felt that he was ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... pension, it ought to be exploded forever: that provision should be viewed, as it really was, a reasonable compensation offered by Congress, at a time when they had nothing else to give to officers of the army, for services then to be performed. It was the only means to prevent a total dereliction of the service. It was a part of their hire; I may be allowed to say, it was the price of their blood, and of your independency. It is therefore more than a common debt; it is a debt of honor: it can never be ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... uttered a last protest against its mode of procedure. "I have strenuously endeavoured," he wrote on the 18th of December, "to avoid laying before you any complaint, more particularly concerning acts done by your excellencies; but there is a point at which such forbearance on my part would become a dereliction of my duty as an officer in the service of Greece, amounting even to treason against the State. So long as the evils extended no further than the depriving the ships-of-war of their crews, and preventing ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... It is neither necessary nor desirable to bring every dereliction of duty before a court-martial for trial. In fact, the invariable preferring of charges for minor[9] offenses will, as a rule, injure rather than help the discipline of a command. The 104th Article of War states, "The commanding ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... was not with them when Jesus came.' No reason is assigned. The absence may have been purely accidental, but the specification of Thomas as 'one of the Twelve,' seems to suggest that his absence was regarded by the Evangelist as a dereliction of apostolic duty; and the cause of it may be found, I think, with reasonable probability, if we take into account the two other facts that the same Evangelist records concerning this Apostle. One is his exclamation, in which a constitutional tendency to accept ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... them, as appears from the sketch of their history given by Moses. But they were without God in the world; having cast off his fear, and the apprehension of his presence, and their accountableness, which often follow the dereliction of ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee

... the more, as great precaution was necessary to escape the vigilant eyes of Wallace, which seemed to be present in every part of the kingdom at once. So careful was he, in overlooking, by his well-chosen officers, civil and military, every transaction, that the slightest dereliction from the straight order of things was immediately seen and examined into. Many of these trusty magistrates having been placed in the Lothians, before March took the government, he could not now remove them without exciting suspicion; and therefore, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... Leicester, accusing him of contempt for her, charging him with thinking more of his own particular greatness than of her honour and service, and then "digressing into old griefs," said the envoy, "too long and tedious to write." She vehemently denounced Davison also for dereliction of duty in not opposing the measure; but he manfully declared that he never deemed so meanly of her Majesty or of his Lordship as to suppose that she would send him, or that he would go to the Provinces, merely, "to take ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... dereliction, reprobation, surrender, evacuation, rejection, abdication. Antonyms: retention, continuance, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... sheet. He looked very blue—a great towering shadow against the sunlight. It was very clear that he knew he was a policeman and could think of nothing else. He was dressed up for the part, and received many shillings a week from a radculgovunment to look like that. It would have been a dereliction of duty to forget it. He was stuffed with duty. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood

... honor as lightly as Germany and felt that the matter of self-preservation would excuse any moral dereliction, she would have imitated the example of Luxemburg, also invaded, and permitted free passage to the German army without essential loss of her material prosperity, but with a fatal ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... duties with patriotic zeal and marked ability, as was to have been expected, and did, I believe, everything that it was possible for them to do in the circumstances. If I have taken the task out of their hands, it has not been because of any dereliction or failure on their part, but only because there were some things which the Government can do, and private management cannot. We shall continue to value most highly the advice and assistance of these gentlemen, and I am sure we shall not find ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson

... best, the action of Fuzl Khan was a dereliction of duty; at the worst!—Desmond could not put his suspicions into words. It was clear that something was afoot, and he resolved to find out what it was. Very cautiously he followed the two men. Bending low, and keeping under the shadow of the bulwarks, he crept to within a few feet of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... Mrs. Thropp pondered bitterly. She was the most moral of women. She had brought up her children with all rigidity. She had abused them for the least dereliction. She had upheld the grimmest standard of virtue, with "Don't!" for its watchword. Of virtue as a warm-hearted, alert, eager, glowing spirit, cultivating the best and most beautiful things in life, she had no idea. Virtue was ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... transcribes unmoved the great poet's account of his own state of mind, after the physicians had warned him that if he persisted in using his remaining eye for his pamphlet, he would lose that too. 'The choice lay before me,' says Milton, 'between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight: in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if AEsculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary. I could not but obey that inward monitor, I knew not what, that spake to me from heaven. I considered with myself that ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... thus on the subject of monopoly, which I shall at a future period fully establish, and which has occasioned the sacrifice of the public, to individual interest, I shall proceed to advert, 8thly, to the loss which the government has sustained in the dereliction of some of its most valuable servants, who have been allured, by the rapid fortunes made by several individuals, to quit the service of the public, and to embark in traffic. The inferior officers of the settlement, and the non-commissioned officers and privates of the regiment, ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann

... the slightest dereliction of her penance would be accompanied with a curse upon her children may have impressed itself upon her mind. Mothers will understand better than other persons what this mother suffered from her ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various

... on the like again; To the last farthing would he rack and strain. For stinted tithes, or stinted offering, He made the people piteously to sing. He left no leg for the good bishop's crook; Down went the black sheep in his own black book; For when the name gat there, such dereliction Came, you must know, sirs, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley



Words linked to "Dereliction" :   wrongful conduct, neglect, carelessness, neglectfulness, actus reus, delinquency, nonfeasance, wrongdoing, nonperformance, negligence, misconduct



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